


your city gave me asthma

by timefighter



Series: TILL DEATH — dream smp [7]
Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Niki | Nihachu Needs a Hug, No Romance, Older Sibling Wilbur Soot, Pain, Toby Smith | Tubbo Needs a Hug, TommyInnit Needs a Break (Video Blogging RPF), TommyInnit Needs a Hug (Video Blogging RPF), Wilbur Soot and Technoblade and TommyInnit are Siblings, Wilbur Soot is Not Okay, Your city gave me asthma, based off of ycgma, niki misses wilbur, no beta we die like wilbur soot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-06
Updated: 2021-02-19
Packaged: 2021-03-18 18:13:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 3,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29247846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/timefighter/pseuds/timefighter
Summary: sleepy bois inc + niki & tubbo characterization-ish based off of songs on your city gave me asthma by wilbur soot
Relationships: Floris | Fundy & Niki | Nihachu, Niki | Nihachu & Toby Smith | Tubbo, Niki | Nihachu & Wilbur Soot, Toby Smith | Tubbo & Technoblade & TommyInnit, Toby Smith | Tubbo & Wilbur Soot & Technoblade & Phil Watson
Series: TILL DEATH — dream smp [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2128614
Kudos: 16





	1. since i saw vienna

**Author's Note:**

> pain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> chommyinnit

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> big t tommy frounce

It wasn’t the exile that disconnected Tommy, nor was it Technoblade’s betrayal. No, it is the period after the ruination of L’Manberg that sets him off. Tommy has always been a wanderer, a traveler, needing to be on the road with the wind in his hair and freedom at his fingertips. As much as he loves Tubbo, as much as he loves Wilbur and what he built, L’Manberg was never Tommy’s symphony, and it never will be. Tommy is not made to lead. He wasn’t born to be the president of a nation that screwed him over too many times to count.

Tommy has so many attachments that he needs in this world.  
His discs, which are the catalyst.  
Tubbo, who is catharsis.  
L’Manberg, in the past.  
Wilbur, in the present.  
His destiny, in the future.

So many little things that connect him to this world, that twist, and pull, and branch out in vines of every shade.  
Wilbur’s coat, which he keeps stowed away, hidden from sight and hidden from mind. (He’s lying about that, but Tommy’s always been good at repressing his feelings.)  
The squared piece of Tubbo’s old shirt he keeps tied in a bandana around his neck, reminding him of his best friend and his brother who he leaves over and over again. (Tommy wishes he would come with him, just this once.)  
The compass, Your Tubbo, that Ghostbur gave him in exile, lives in his pocket so he’ll never lose it. (If Tommy and Tubbo were separated for good, Tommy doesn’t know what he’d do with himself.)

Tommy is not a man of substance, but attachments are the most important thing in his life. Without attachment, what is the point? What is there to exist for, if not for attachment?  
If not for his attachment to Tubbo? His best friend, his brother, his president, his banisher?  
If not for his attachment to Wilbur? His older sibling, his rock, his guard, his manipulator?  
If not for his attachment to Sam, to Technoblade, to Philza, to Puffy, to Jack?

Tommy hasn’t been home for a while. He doesn’t even know what he considers ‘home’ anymore.  
It’s not L’Manberg, he knows that. Is it Technoblade’s cabin? Is it Logstedshire?

Or is ‘home’ a concept, not a physical object? Is ‘home’ with Tubbo, his safe place, the boy he knows his soul is linked to in some way or another? Tommy isn’t religious, but he’s always had a deeper connection with Tubbo than anyone else.  
Is ‘home’ with Technoblade and Phil, the people who raised him, mentored him, betrayed him? Tommy wants to hate his brother and his father, he does, but blood relationships are hard to forget.  
Was ‘home’ lost when Wilbur died? Did Tommy’s conceptualization of the word ‘home’ dissipate when his brother died? Tommy and Wilbur were always close, even when he was at his lowest, when Wilbur’s mental stability was deteriorating.

Tommy travels with Puffy for a while. He doesn’t even know how she found him.  
The Captain had simply appeared at his camp one night, offering to keep him company on his journey. She is with him the whole time, a shoulder to lean on when he needs it, a fast-flowing river when he’s ready to leave.  
The cut he’d gotten when the two of them were splashing in a creek, covered with a bandage, is paired with a smile. A real smile, Puffy knows, because Tommy hasn’t grinned in so long. A real, carefree, youthful smile she missed seeing on his face.

In his dreams, Tommy sees Wilbur. He sees his brother’s smile, those white teeth and nothing but pure happiness.  
He sees Technoblade, when he used to take his armor and weapons off and relax by the fire. When he used to sit and just be.  
He sees Phil, his father. When he taught him how to hold a sword, how to string a bow, how to throw a trident.  
He sees Tubbo. He sees the nonchalant nature and kind eyes, the way he’d exist without a care in the world.

Tommy lets his memories burn like a wildfire. He lets them simmer on the stove, lets the embers wink out and be smothered by the present. And he moves on. He doesn’t forget, no. He’ll never forget. But he doesn’t let the souvenirs of his past bind him like Prometheus, forever chained to that stone and eaten alive.

As Tommy’s travels draw to a close, he knows home is near.  
He gets a feeling deep inside his bones, the kind that is hot and cold and everything and nothing, all at the same time.  
Tubbo greets him at the gates of Snowchester.  
Puffy withdraws, her farewell a kiss on his forehead and a promise that she’ll always be with him, no matter what.


	2. your sister was right

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> wimblur sot

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> haha can you tell wilbur’s my favorite character

Wilbur Soot is not a good person. He lies, and he cheats, and he uses everyone he meets.  
He didn’t use to be like this. He grew up in a good home, though overlooked by his father, but he was happy. His younger brother was his best friend and his worst enemy, his confidant, his victim.  
His older brother constantly overshadowed Tommy and Wilbur. Technoblade, the Blood God, the Blade, Philza’s favored son.  
And it angered Wilbur. Plain and simple. He’d always wanted to be something. Be someone. He wanted people to lead and look after and care for. He wanted people to care about him, care about who he was.

But that doesn’t matter anymore, does it? Because Wilbur’s spiraling, of course. He’s paranoid, obviously. His goals and dreams aren’t in the name of public good, not anymore. L’Manberg is ruined. It’ll be gone soon, Wilbur knows. Schlatt is a blight. He’s a disease who takes and keeps taking, never fulfilled. Never sated. His desires and corrupted policies exploit his nation, and it shows on the faces, minds, and bodies of the people in this so-called ‘Manberg.’

It shows in Quackity, whose wings are bound and broken under layers of bandages and well-tailored suits. It shows itself on his face, his red-rimmed, dead eyes with those dark circles that hold depths only Wilbur could know.  
It shows in Niki, whose near-translucent skin from months of rationing stretches over bone and what’s left of the muscle she had before Schlatt was elected. It shows itself in her broken stride, how she leans on an invisible crutch.  
It shows in Tubbo, whose frigid hands shake every time he picks up a pen. It shows itself in his scarred skin from the shockwave from Technoblade’s firework-launching crossbow, the way his right ear is perpetually hard of hearing.

It shows in Wilbur, because Wilbur sees himself in Schlatt. If he were to look the President in the eye, face him down for the last time, he’d be looking in a mirror, his own face, his own neurotic gaze, his own fucked up smirk that he gives to Tommy when he’s about to ruin his life again staring back at him. He hates it. He hates what he’s become. He hates that he relishes in the fear of his friends and family, the way he ostracizes them every time they reach out for him.

Wilbur knows it’s the end of the road for him. He knows that once he steps foot back into his former land, the country he built with his own sweat, blood, and tears, the one he fought to liberate and build with his bare hands and nothing but the clothes on his back and the guilt of a million years, he’s going to blow it to hell. He’s the villain in their history books, the antagonist in Tommy’s story.

Because L’Manberg is his unfinished symphony. It’s the act he’ll never consummate, the harmony he’ll never write the conclusion for, the narrative he’ll never put himself back into. Because his people, his friends, his family, his brother? They deserve the world. They deserve a nation they can grow in, a president who can love them. A president who deserves to love them. Because Wilbur knows he’s unworthy of them, knows he doesn’t get to love them the way he wants to.

But it’s not this L’Manberg. This L’Manberg is Wilbur Soot’s L’Manberg. It’s the one he lost, the one he was exiled from, the one he’s inevitably going to destroy. The L’Manberg he wants them to have is Tommy’s L’Manberg, it’s Tubbo’s L’Manberg. It’s the country abolished and rebuilt, not stolen and regoverned. It’s not Manberg, and it’s not Pogtopia. It’s nothing they’ve seen before, nothing they’ve fabricated, nothing they’ve already had.

Wilbur hates to say it, but Schlatt is right. If he dies, this country goes down with him, and Wilbur is counting on that.  
Wilbur is going to press that button that hides away in his little room under the podium Tubbo will stand on again.  
Wilbur is saying goodbye to his forever unfinished symphony, and he’s made peace with it. He has, he really has.

Wilbur Soot is not a good person. He lies, and he cheats, and he uses everyone he meets. Wilbur Soot is a blight, a disease, and he’s never fulfilled, never sated. He hates to say it, but Schlatt was right.

Wilbur is at peace as he hands the presidency to Tommy, who elects Tubbo in his place. Tommy isn’t finished either.  
Wilbur is at peace as he presses the button in that room, the song of his country echoing in his head as the walls come down around him and his father.  
Wilbur is at peace as Philza, his father, his savior, his enemy, plunges his own sword into his chest cavity, the blade he fought and killed with, the one he commanded soldiers and led victory and defeat with.  
Wilbur is at peace as he dies in his father’s arms.


	3. la jolla

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> niki nihachu brainrot

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ninki minjaj

Niki has always been grounding to her friends. She has always been their rock in times of need, the shoulder to cry on, the body to lean against, the hand to hold and guide them through rough patches and dark days. Niki is the therapist friend, the one who gives and gives and never gets anything back. It’s not like she expects anything, no, she’s okay with it. Used to it.

Niki has always been overlooked, overshadowed. She has always been spoken over and never listened to. She’s always been quiet. A wallflower, shy and undemanding. She’s the pretty face, the pretty girl in a pretty world with her head in the clouds and mind glazed over. She speaks when spoken to, a follower, never leading, never commanding.

She’s sick of it.

She’s tired of it.

Niki wants to be heard. So, she makes herself heard. She makes them listen, because if they don’t? She’ll burn it to the ground. She’ll demolish it, kill the beast, snuff the ever—burning fire of L’Manberg and suffocate the life breathed into the L’Mantree.

If Wilbur was water and frost, smooth and comforting and kind and cold, if Wilbur was the river that twisted through the hills and carved a lazy stream through the land, if Wilbur was the ice that glossed over the lakes and ponds and held a million secrets, then Niki is fire.

Niki is the burning blaze of the sun, the inferno that parches your throat and destroys forests and fields and people alike. Niki is the magma bubbling under volcanoes, ready to erupt at any second, holding enough power to level an entire city. Niki is the hand igniting the L’Mantree in the wake of Doomsday.

Niki is the hellflame, and she will not be stopped.

After the finale and dissolution of her country, Niki covets closure. She craves a reason, a motive to continue on. It’s not that Niki no longer wants to exist— no, she is merely lost. Niki desires purpose, an objective, a vindication as to where she belongs now. 

Not with Tommy. He’s the root of all her problems. Even if he’s a kid, he’s only two years younger than Niki. If she can be sagacious and analytical, why can’t he?  
Not with Tubbo. He’s too attached to Tommy. Tubbo is too easily manipulated by those around him, but Niki knows she used to be the same way. She still is, sometimes.  
Not with Ranboo. He doesn’t trust her. He’s too wrapped up in his own mind to even think of choosing someone to side with.  
Not with Fundy. He’s too far gone. She heard his speech. She heard the way his voice cracked, the way his eyes looked far too close to Wilbur’s when he pressed the button.

Niki is lonely, and she knows it.

Niki wonders if she could just disappear. Wonders if she could leave without notice, without someone to miss her, just to go and stay in her secret city deep in the earth and rot there. She could pack her things and be gone before anyone was awake. She could just… cease to exist in L’Manberg, in these ruins, in this empty, gaping space that lives forever in her mind and chest.

Maybe one day, she’ll live in her secret city, alone with her thoughts and desires and memories and grievances. She’ll take the days as they come to her, simply moving through life, just to be.

So she can move on from it all.  
Move on from Tommy.  
Move on from Tubbo.  
Move on from Fundy.  
Move on from Ranboo.  
Move on from L’Manberg and her bakery and flower shop and Puffy and the sunsets and sunrises and the wars and the grief and pain and suffering and—  
Move on from Wilbur.


	4. i’m sorry boris

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “your tubbo” SOBBING??

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tubbox tubbo in a box what will he do

L’Manberg is gone. For good, this time. The country Tubbo helped found, the one he spied for and exiled his best friend from and even led for a while, is gone. For good, this time.

Tubbo’s not sure if he misses it. He abandoned it, after all. For his little town in the cold north, Snowchester. He doesn’t lead Snowchester. He’s not the president, or the king, or any of that bullshit. Tubbo’s done with ruling. He’s done with commanding, and he’s done being the one calling the shots.

(It’s not like he had any real power, anyways. Dream reigned with an iron fist and a sword held unwavering at his unprotected throat.)

It is the end for Tommy and Tubbo. Doomsday was only the beginning. Tubbo is all but a pawn in Dream’s fatal game of chess, and he’s about to be sacrificed for the most powerful piece— Tommy. And he’s okay with it. They had their fun, they had their laughs, their sorrows and ruinations. Tubbo is alright with dying, if it means Tommy survives to see another day. If it means Tommy lives another day to sit on the bench, listening to Cat and watching the sun rise over a broken land.

Tubbo isn’t scared, but he doesn’t want it to end here.  
He doesn’t want to leave Tommy. Not that Tommy needs him, but Tubbo needs Tommy.  
He doesn’t want to leave his best friend alone in the dark, alone with Dream, alone with nothing but painful memories and the shadow of his brothers forever looking over his shoulder. If Tubbo is the angel on Tommy’s left shoulder, Wilbur was the devil on his right.

But then by some stroke of luck, by some fucking miracle, Tubbo isn’t dead. He doesn’t believe in gods, but in this moment, he’s thanking every single one of them as Sapnap steps in front of the two teenagers. Tubbo knows the people gathered here would go to the ends of the Earth to defend them from Dream. They’ve finally opened their eyes and realized that it isn’t Tommy that’s the enemy, no, it’s Dream.

It’s Dream, with his wicked axe and its twin blade, with his cruel, unforgiving hand and emotionless, blank smiley mask that covers his features.  
It’s Dream, with his laws and his walls and his usurping and his destruction that follows perpetually in his wake.  
It’s Dream, with his drive and his insatiable need for power, for control, because if he has none, if he has no sway, no influence, he’s nothing.

Tubbo knows in his heart, now, that it isn’t over. It isn’t his time, and it most definitely is not Tommy’s. He’s not done with this world. He isn’t finished here, and neither is his best friend.  
And Tubbo knows that no matter how far he runs, no matter where he travels, Tommy will be there.  
And Tommy will be waiting, because Tommy is Tubbo’s home.


	5. jubilee line

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> philza moincroft

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> MR MINECRAFT HIMSELF. PRAISE THE LORD PHILZA MINECRAFT

Philza thought he knew despair when he saw his sons leave. He thought he knew pain when he saw Technoblade, Tommy, and Wilbur walk out the door of their family home for the last time. He thought he knew heartache when he sat alone in their, _his_ , living room, his head in his hands, Wilbur’s guitar next to him, Techno’s crown on his knee, Tommy’s books in a stack at his feet.

But nothing compared to the pure agony he felt when Wilbur, his middle son, with his deep brown eyes that held so many secrets and so, so much suffering, and his trembling hands that stilled when they gestured to his chest, told him to murder him where he stood.

Phil doesn’t know whether that would be considered murder or assisted suicide. But he knows that it was a fate worse than dying.

L’Manberg was a poison. It was a toxin introduced to an organism that drained and stole and seized all the love and joy its inhabitants once held. The country did nothing but hurt and ruin those inside of it. Phil wants to scream to Tubbo and Tommy that it’s not worth defending, that Technoblade and Dream are going to level it and blow it to hell, that they’re going to destroy it beyond repair and leave no remains.

Philza wishes he could go back in time to stop Wilbur from ever creating the idea of a nation, for sparking an idea of independence. He wishes he could show Wilbur that it would end up in flames and craters, that he himself would be the one to press the button and become his brother’s worst nightmare. That he was the traitor, the villain in their history books.

Philza has walls.  
Walls around his body; his armour.  
Walls around his mind; a prison.  
Walls around his family; broken.

These walls are not kind. These walls are black adamant, these walls are obsidian, these walls do not forgive. They loom above him, unhearing, unloving.  
They do not hear his cries and his calls for help. They do not hear the way his nails scratch and break against them, the way they enclose his kin in shadows.

Tubbo is sealed away in these walls, a quiet, withdrawn president with no power.  
Niki is gone, an angry woman with nothing to lose. She’s torn down her walls, abandoned Phil’s.  
Technoblade is locked in his own, the voices overwhelmingly loud.

There’s a reason Philza puts up walls.  
And there’s a reason they fail.


	6. saline solution

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> technoblade moment

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> technochan  
> CW: insects in paragraph 9!!

When Technoblade pulls the trigger of his rocket launcher, pointed at Tubbo’s face, a small part inside of him dies.  
When Technoblade sets the Withers upon L’Manberg the first time, a small part inside of him dies.  
When Technoblade does it the second time, he thinks he’s dying.

Technoblade isn’t a saint. Far from it, really. He’s not a good person, but who is, really? No one’s perfect. Not even Phil, however much he loves and cherishes the man. No, there’s not a single person Technoblade can think of on this server that is morally perfect.

Not Tommy, that’s for sure. Tommy started nearly every war here.  
Not Tubbo, even if Techno knows he’s better than most. He’s the president, and governments are built to oppress the proletariat.  
Not Wilbur. Never Wilbur. Technoblade thinks of him like a brother, he cares for him. He really does. Technoblade is glad he destroyed L’Manberg the first time around. But Wilbur used people around him. He used Tommy, and Tubbo, and Niki, and his son, and even Technoblade himself if he really thinks about it.

He thinks this time he’s dying, as Tommy’s grief stricken face stares up at him on that obsidian grid Dream built above the country Technoblade has genuinely come to hate.

The blond’s hair is plastered to his forehead, armor hanging off his too—skinny body. He’s just a kid.  
But he betrayed Technoblade first, and Techno’s never been good at breaking the cycle.

He might’ve lost his mind that night. January 6th is a blur to him, the Withers and the TNT jumbling into one seething mass Technoblade is too exhausted to untangle. So he stores it away in the back of his mind, and moves on.

Everything around Technoblade that reminds him of the past mocks him.  
Wilbur’s sword lives in a chest downstairs, and everytime Techno pulls it out, he’s back in L’Manberg, watching Phil plunge it through Wilbur’s chest cavity.  
Tommy’s shield is propped against the wall in the basement where he slept, long forgotten. The shield Technoblade had made for him, with the flag of the Antarctic Anarchist Commune painstakingly painted on the front of it.  
Tubbo’s eyes survive in his dreams, Quackity’s voice echoes in his head daily. Even Niki’s pink hair is still visible to him, as she burns the L’Mantree.

He’s proud of her for that.

Technoblade’s made his choice. He’s dying. He’s been dying for awhile now. His lungs are withered, his brain rotted. Maggots crawl in his veins, spiders and centipedes take residence in his eye sockets and bones. He’s a leech sucking bloodbags, drinking the life force of his friends and foes alike.

And he’s made his peace with it.


End file.
